This chapter provides a case analysis of the Catholic Church’s Synod on the Family, an assembly of bishops convened in Rome in October 2014 and October 2015, to address the changing nature of Catholics’ lived experiences of marriage and family life. The chapter argues that the Synod can be considered a postsecular event owing to its deft negotiation of the mutual relevance of doctrinal ideas and Catholic secular realities. It shows how its extensive pre-Synod empirical surveys of Catholics worldwide, its language-group dialogical structure, and the content and outcomes of its deliberations, by and large, met postsecular expectations, despite impediments posed by clericalism and doctrinal politics. The chapter traces the Synod’s deliberations, and shows how it managed to forge a more inclusive understanding of divorced and remarried Catholics, even as it reaffirmed Church teaching on marriage and also set aside a more inclusive recognition of same-sex relationships.
關係契約視野下的婚姻家庭